Stealing
Stealing involves the use of stealth and is the art of taking someone else's object for one's own. A character's effectivess in stealing is governed by Sneak and Agility. It's most effective when the character is in the shadows or when no other person can see the character when he/she is attempting to steal. Stay in stealth mode and make sure the "eye" crosshair is not bright gold -- that means the character can be seen. Stolen items are marked with a red hand icon and honest merchants do not buy stolen goods. It is possible to launder items by enchanting the stolen piece, which creates a new unmarked magical item, or selling them to a fence and buying them back. To have access to a fence, you must join the Thieves Guild. Removing the Stolen Item Flag Removing the stolen flag can be done in one of three ways: *'Selling the item to a fence'. When the item is sold, the flag is removed, and you can buy the item back. However, this method can be very expensive. Stolen items cannot be sold to regular merchants. The items will not even show up in the list of things to be sold when you open up the merchant window. Stolen items can only be sold to a fence. *Neither working on PS3 (Tonilia) 05/02/12 KillingForPeace (talk) 17:13, February 5, 2012 (UTC)KillingForPeace *'Returning the item to the owner'. Due to the way the game handles stolen items, the stolen flag is only applied when the item is taken by someone who is not the owner. The flag is removed when the item is back in the possession of the owner, such as in the owner's body. Taking an item from a body does not count as stealing, though you most likely have to have the owner's body available before using this method. * This method does not always work in houses where multiple people live and places with merchants, because of how the interior area ownership is handled. Merchants have their items flagged as owned by 'someone else' to prevent them from being sold by the merchant, while multiple-resident housing simply has messy and unclear ownership. *'Enchanting the item'. By using a Sigil Stone or an Altar of Enchanting, you can enchant the stolen item and it will become a new, un-stolen item. This only works on armor, clothing, jewelry, and weapons. **NOTE: This seems to have been patch on the PS3 and PC, can anyone confirm this for the other platforms. Stolen items enchant still possess the Stolen tag. *'Mix the item into a potion'. Potions made from stolen ingredients are not considered stolen. *'Smelt the ore into ingots, tan the hide into leather, tan the leather into strips, or make the bars, leather and/or other materials into a piece of gear'. Since its form has changed, the items will no longer be marked as stolen. *Deposit the item into a chest, then have a follower steal from a chest, then trade... when you take back the stolen item the stolen flag will be removed. NOTE: it has to be a chest you "steal" from, it does not work with chests you can freely take items from. *Works on PS3 05/02/12 KillingForPeace (talk) 17:13, February 5, 2012 (UTC)KillingForPeace *Works on Xbox 360 as well (17/02/12, patch 1.4) **NOTE: This seems to have been patched out between the last time this article was updated up to the 1.3.1 patch on December 20th, 2011. Not sure exactly when the change was made, but stolen items placed in objects to be taken by a follower, and then trading said items, no longer removes the stolen tag. **NOTE: This added a stolen tag to several items that could not have been stolen, including Wabbajack and the Staff of Magnus. This happened whilst moving house, after instructing a companion to empty containers and weapon racks within Breezehome. Items taken after the companion reached her carry capacity were flagged as stolen when traded back. (xbox 1.3.1). *Drop the stolen item, then open console, then click on the item and type in the command "setownership". When you click the item, you will see the ID of the item in the middle of the screen. If it doesn't start with "ff" then you couldn't correctly click the item, so try again. After typing in the command "setownership" (without quotes), stolen tag will be removed. You can see this immediately with moving the cursor away from the item and then re-pointing the item. *Get caught steeling, pay the fine, then get your companion to steel your items back from the chest! (PS3) Notes * The fencing trick does not work with keys so do not attempt because the key will be lost forever, this goes for non-stolen keys as well, just buy a house and choose some container to hold any stolen keys so if you're ever caught by the law the items won't be taken from you. ** An alternative option would be to get the Lockpicking perk Wax Key (requires Lockpicking level 50), as the copies you make upon picking the lock are clean (not flagged as stolen). *Books found laying around marked with a red open book are directly read rather than placed into your inventory. Since you are not actually taking the item in your possession the game does not register it as stealing. *Picking up and dropping an item is also considered stealing so be careful. *In Skyrim, if you steal an item from a house (i.e. a book) and then promptly drop it, the owner of the house may return the item to you because if you drop an item that you own in someone's house, they will attempt to return the item to you. So, you can steal items from a house, keep them without them being seen as stolen, and continue to keep them even if you go to pay off the fine (in which they would normally take your stolen items). *In Skyrim, if you place an object around the owners head, (such as a pot, basket, or any similar object), you are considered to be out of their sight and can therefore steal items within their close proximity without much fear of being caught. Be wary, however, of NPCs that move as the objects might fall off. In addition, some key NPCs cannot have things placed on their heads, as a sort of invisible bubble slides the item off. *When stealing a horse while sneaking you will often be detected because the horse itself can see you. If you're certain that you're hidden from any nearby people steal it anyway and you will not get a bounty. *With the new patch, items taken from a container by the companion (even a container you own) will be labeled as stolen when you take the items from the companion. *In Skyrim, any stolen arrows in a quiver will result in the entire lot as being flagged as stolen. *Improving an item using the Smithing skill will not remove the stolen flag. *I found this out by accidentally stealing from a stall in Riften. I had taken a piece of armor from Grelka when I tried to talk to her.I expected to get a bounty since I was in a populated area but she just walked around the stall and took the item back,no bounty added or aggression. Category: Game mechanics